Our 2011 Harvest report steps outside of the normal bounds of the California Harvest Report. The genre has a fixed idiom (includes "best ever", excludes "rot") and a conventional manner (cheerful, enthusiastic, high-energy. ) Even the photographs represent a narrow repertoire: mistly landscapes, dumping red fruit into the destemmer (see left for our version), golden retrievers on the crush pad. And why not? the genre has a well-defined purpose—excite interest, sell wine. I have written several of these reports mysefl; the website is full of this language and these photos.

Harvest is an incredibly exciting time—the culmination of a year's growing season, and the birth of any wine that we will ever release, promote, consume. It is natural in every way that the harvest email heeds a well defined and somewhat clichéed script.

I am varying from that script this year not out of rebelliousness or desire to innovate, but because of the nature of this year's harvest itself. It is δεινος— an Ancient Greek word that means terrible and amazing at once. Something terrible, but that you cannot take your eyes off. That is the nature of this year's harvest. And so it is only right to compose a report in a new mode, one that abandons more cheerful enthusiasm and manages to express a little terror.